This Is The Place by Anthony Neil Smith

I’m in a good place. I’m happy with my writing, my job, my family, and my health at the moment (it was a rough couple of years for health, but I’m back on the bike). I have realized my place in the writing world, and I’m feeling great about it. I like publishing my short stories in lit mags I admire, and publishing my books with some passionate indie presses. I’m taking things a little slower, smelling more roses, and stopping for more sunsets.

So why, then, have I been tweeting my “shitty agent” stories, my frustrating close calls with mainstream publishers, and my experiences with sneering indie bookshop owners and employees that plagued most of my last twenty years in the lit “scene”?

Precisely because I am in a good place. I don’t want or need a literary agent, Big NYC publisher, or indie bookshops in my life, happily, so I can tell these stories with a few laughs. It’s a ridiculous industry, taken far too seriously by a lot of insiders, and it needs some needling now and then. And my message to all writers out there: you deserve better.

I’ve heard a lot of stories like mine from writers who have been in equally infuriating circumstances. However, they don’t feel comfortable sharing them publicly because they feel other agents might blacklist them, or they’ll be shunned by literary cliques (don’t worry about it. It’s actually liberating) or the Big 5 (4, 3, 2…) publishers. The thing is, corporate publishers don’t even know we exist, and if you write a book they want to make money with, they could give a shit what you said about them before. I understand the feeling. Don’t bite the hand that you’d like to feed you. But doesn’t that make you feel awful? Powerless? Small? Why not share your experiences online so other writers can recognize it’s not just them? It’s the whole goddamned business. You deserve better.

Lately, I’ve found a lot of independent presses online reaching out directly to readers, cutting out the middlemen – distributors and bookshops – and building audiences via smart, targeted marketing plans. It’s a new lease on life for many great writers who have been told, “Your book is good, buuuuuut….” Then something about “I don’t know how to sell it,” or “I didn’t fall in love with it,” or, more likely, not bothering to get back in touch with the writer at all. Go read the comments on Querytracker.com. A lot of unnecessary heartbreak over there. You deserve better.

Anyway, you can find small presses with clear identities and vivid personalities who champion niche work. Experimental, transgressive, weird, unmarketable or pushing the envelope – there’s a press for them all.

Yes, the writing has to be good. Of course the writing has to be good. An indie press is not a “consolation prize.” It’s the different between Domino’s Pizza and that really great pizzeria in your town that tastes like no one else’s. Actually, I like eating both, but each is a very different experience. And the last thing you want is for your local pizza joint to go corporate and water down whatever it is you loved about it.

(My favorite pizza place is Punch in Minneapolis, which has expanded to twelve locations around the greater Minneapolis area without sacrificing quality. You love to see it when your favorites, including indie presses, are able to grow without having to abandon what makes them special in the first place.)

That’s not to say it’s all wine, roses, milk, and honey in the small press world. I’ve been burned (and, yes, I’ve burned some bridges behind me). Sometimes you have to chase down a payment or two. Sometimes you find out friendships and business don’t always mix. Sometimes the press goes broke and leaves you high and dry, no matter how hard they tried to keep the boat afloat.

Those are some terrible mixed metaphors.

No, it’s not perfect. I don’t think any situation in publishing is perfect.

Okay, except for that one guy. We all know who that one guy is. He’s almost a genre to himself anymore. He has the perfect publishing situation.

What I think is that when old Gen X’ers like me went to trade in or sell your old CDs because – ha ha ha ha ha yeah – I bet you kept the ones from the indie labels. There is something special about those. You remember when and where you bought them, remember what it was like to have this limited run album. Not because it was intended to be a limited run, but because that was the only run. The label didn’t expect to make a lot of money off it. They dug deep to give the band all it could afford to say “We love this. We want to be a part of it.”

That’s how I’ve felt being published by Pointblank Press, Two Dollar Radio, Bleak House Books, Blasted Heath, Editions Sonatine, Meridiano Zero, Down & Out Books, and now, Fahrenheit Press (plus a few more forthcoming). Were these books going to sell? I don’t think any of these presses particularly cared. They wanted them to. Wished and hoped and prayed for them to. But in the end, I think they just wanted to share a story they loved with readers. They thought the book deserved a chance out there.

They thought it deserved the best.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s what they gave each and every one.

And writers, you deserve the best, too.

Anthony Neil Smith, July 2024

You can follow Anthony Neil Smith on twitter @Prof_AN_Smith and find out more about his Fahrenheit books here...